All the Abstract Nouns
by ACtravels
Summary: Molly Weasley doesn't believe in abstract nouns. Actually, she generally disagrees with many a grammatical function – verbs and nouns are more her sort of thing. None of these poncey adverbs.    A story about growing up. Backwards.
1. Eighteen

_At eighteen, life was about finding a way to be happy with all the bits that were left lying around..._

*

Molly found it strange how she was unwillingly being thrust into adulthood whilst she still felt a little like a flailing teenager quite a lot of the time (although whenever she looked at fifteen year olds she had to admit they seemed extraordinarily young). They were subtle changes, mostly, but suddenly it was okay for older men to look at her and find her attractive without quickly trying to decided whether or not it was acceptable – she wasn't sixteen anymore, there was no ambiguity about it, and now walking to the shop or ordering a drink at the Hogs Head it was okay for her to be hit on, commented about and discussed in crude and vulgar language loud enough for her ears to cringe away from it.

At eighteen, she had responsibilities. Although she hadn't yet been called upon to vote for anything, she'd found herself spending a lot more time reading the Prophet in an attempt to find some reasoning for her views rather than just having them. Before her opinion actually counted she was quite happy to go along with whatever view seemed like a good one at the time: sometimes just to disagree with people she didn't like; sometimes because she liked the way supporting the labour party made her feel like she had the moral high ground (although she rarely found anyone who'd discuss muggle politics with her anyway) and sometimes just for the hell of it. Mostly she was responsible for herself: decisions that were looming ever closer and whole futures that she was supposed to map out and work out.

She thought that it was bizarre that she had to decide what career she wanted for the rest of the life when she still had her socks washed for her, _but_ she hadn't yet learnt how to wash socks so she wasn't going to complain too much about that (but it couldn't be hard, right?). She liked the good bits of independence, at eighteen, and was finding herself wanting more and more to have her own space away from her parents, to cook for herself and not have to get the okay before she could actually go out and do anything. She didn't think she was quite ready to be an adult just yet, but she was going to exploit this state of the in-between for as long as she could. She was old enough to know that being an adult was also kind of crap.

One very good reason for not-quite-being-an-adult was cemented in the fact that instead of going out to some pub, or some club, she'd been dragged into attending another house party instead. She knew that the main reason for this is that the places everyone who was of age in both worlds – or those who had acquired some form of fake ID – were muggle venues and whilst she had hit the big one eight last month, all her friends remained firmly at seventeen until after Christmas. Dexter had half heartedly suggested that they just confund one of the bouncers, but Molly had reminded him that when James tried that he got a caution, a black mark on his record and was grounded for a month. Aunt Ginny had been 'disappointed' and that was enough punishment for any man.

Dexter had called her uptight in retaliation to this, but they all knew that they weren't really going to venture into the wider world of clubbing until they were all legal – mostly because they just weren't _those_ sorts of people.

Roxy had made quite a big deal about how she'd acquired a venue for the party, although Molly was very tempted to point out that this couldn't have been a very difficult feet. Uncle George was not exactly well known for stamping his foot and not allowing either of his children to have the most amount of fun as possible – so she imagined the conversation beginning with 'can I have a Christmas party?' finished with 'sure, don't break any more windows.' Still, she couldn't complain: at least, this time, their party plans hadn't resulted in another awkward non-event – something which had the tendency to happen every time a single person optimistically volunteered to sort out the adventure.

The end of the Christmas holidays had fallen early this year, but Molly still didn't think she'd recovered well enough from the exhausting term to actually enjoy the party. So now she was half lying across the sofa watching as Roxy giggled and flirted excessively with long-term-boyfriend-number-two-and-a-half (depending on whether Rodger counted or not). She was fairly peacefully just sitting and watching, waiting until it was late enough that she could excuse herself, go home and sleep. That was another thing about growing old – she seemed to have lost her 'party hard' tendency already, and instead getting good and drunk seemed tiring and a little pointless rather than a great idea for a fun night. Not that she hadn't already drunk more than she would admit to her parents (of age or not of age, she just didn't think they needed to know their little girl drank Red Spark Spritzers like they were pumpkin juice – let_ alone_ what Lucy drank).

"Life and soul of the party," Dexter commented, sitting on the arm of the sofa and raising his eyebrows at her. If she wasn't half way to drunkenness herself, she probably would have picked up on the fact that Dexter was the walking unconscious.

"Sod off," Molly said, rolling her eyes and shutting them for a second. She couldn't be bothered with him for the time being.

"Oh, so witty,"

"I know right," Molly returned, pulling herself upright and finishing the rest of her glass before setting it down on the side, "is there something you wanted?"

"Well, not your company for one,"

"I could have guessed that,"

"Unfortunately, Ian, Tom and I are nearly out of booze,"

"And this is my problem because...?"

"You're the resident eighteen year old, Molly,"

"I told everyone last week that I would not be doing the alcohol run," Molly said irritably, "and I'm all set, so..."

"You know you're going to give in," Dexter said before standing up and crossing the living room to exit out onto the porch. Outside the other males of their group were congregated and Molly half suspected that the reason for this was that they could smoke without Roxanne going apeshit.

It wasn't like Roxanne could talk, given she'd gone through her own little smoking phase whilst accompanied with serious boyfriend number one and a half (again, do we count Roger?) and was still liable to be found leaning against walls and stealing quick smokes from people at slightly cooler parties. Molly herself was more or less the same: she had to appreciate that fags were much nicer than she wanted them to be, but also that her dad might die if he ever heard about her doing something like _smoking_. She'd never had a whole cigarette to herself, nor did she want to, but there was no harm in passing one back and forth, or just making do with good old fashion second hand smoke, was there?(other than the obvious health effects, but she tended not to think of those too much). Still, if Roxanne knew about the whole _smoking on her patio_ thing she'd probably be using their lighters to set fire to their eyebrows, or making them lick their cigarette butts off the floor.

Lucy, who always managed to worm her way into these plans no matter how much it bothered Molly, was currently dancing with Simrath and Ella. Molly grudgingly had to admit that Lucy was the superior out of the three, and was astounded by her sister's extreme levels of class given the half bottle of firewhisky she was currently bearing in her left hand. The straw sticking out of the bottle really topped the scene off nicely.

Not that Molly was much better, at least when she was actually in the mood for one of their little parties. There were a few horribly embarrassing incidents that had occurred over the years and she wouldn't exactly want anyone to think that she spent all parties sat on the sofa watching rather than participating. Nor would she want anyone to think was a drunken twit, although she'd had her moments. At eighteen Molly could tell you that life was all about balance – and although she hadn't quite mastered this balance thing just yet and mostly wound up veering one way to another on issues like this, she'd decide in the end. And that was what was important.

"Molly!" Roxy declared, pulling herself off the boyfriend for a minute and throwing herself down on the sofa next to her with a woozy grin. Speaking of balance, Roxanne never seemed to able to reach that middle point, as far as alcohol was concerned, and either wound up very sober and very bored or hideously emotional and silly. This was her house which meant that for her, pre-drinks had started two hours before anyone but Molly and David (the boyfriend) had arrived... meaning she was both emotional and silly, "seventh year is really hard," She complained, chewing on her bottom lip.

Molly took Roxy's drink from her hands and placed it on the side. She took a good sip out of it first, for good measure. She was saving Roxy further embarrassment really. Molly was practically a saint. A fact which, in honesty, everyone should really learn to appreciate more.

"Agreed," Molly said with a sigh, staring woefully at her own empty glass before finishing off Roxy's drink in an act of extreme friendship.

"So what do you think of David?"

"You've been dating for four months," Molly deadpanned, glancing up to where David was rather goofily attempting to do some sort of samba with a near hysterical Erin, who despite being considered fabulously hot by all males everywhere (particularly the ones smoking outside – never mind that most of them were taken respectively by the others wandering around) she really was the most terrible dancer.

"Yeah, I know," Roxanne said sappily. Even Molly had to admit that this was the most mature of Roxy's relationships so far (definitely including Rodger this time). Unlike with Wilson she'd learnt about this thing called trust and had toned down the clingy 'we've decided what our children are going to be called' part of her normal boy-hysteria to a bare minimum: only deciding that she loved him a little over a week ago (something which, in Roxanne terms, was an incredible feet of nature).

"I like him," Molly admitted, and it was a truth that wasn't so easy to spit out. She'd become accustomed to groaning and moaning about Roxy's boyfriends with her as she rode the rollercoaster of heartache, jealousy, arguments and the eventual 'should I break up with him' that always followed. Now, as the honeymoon period quickly began fading, Molly was finding that she was actually having to help out Roxy with genuine problems and that her normal sentiment of 'if he's making you unhappy, dump the bastard' didn't cut it so well when there was genuine feelings to be considered. Instead Roxy had been experimenting with this little thing she called 'working on a relationship' and Molly was well and truly baffled by it all.

But now it was practically an _adult relationship_. It was nearly _serious_.

"I'm going outside for a minute," Molly said, pulling herself off the couch and glancing round the room. Erin's boyfriend, Ian, had emerged and wrapped her arms around her waist with a grin. It was like a freaking love fest in here – an outrageous reminder of singledom that pissed her off a little. At least outside she could just watch her guy-friends be brainless idiots _sans _sappiness.

"If the others are smoking tell them that I hate them," Roxanne said, letting herself be pulled up by Molly's drunken sister (her boyfriend was ceremoniously not invited, because everyone all hated his guts – meaning that at least she was acting like she was single) and forced into waltzing around the room to a rock song by '_Expelliarmus!_' who really should have stuck to cheesy pop – and maybe not even bothered with that.

"Roxy's gonna kill you," Molly said as she stepped gingerly onto the patio, trying not to let her stilettos wind up stuck between the cracks between the slabs of concrete and making a note to remind Uncle George to sort it out at some point soon. If she wound up face down in one of his plant pots she would not be happy. Actually, she might end up a little _too_ happy as Uncle George certainly had a peculiar sense of what plants to plant. Most of which were astoundingly illegal.

"What's she going to do?" Dexter said, shrugging his shoulders at her. There were now four of them clustered round the little wooden picnic table and Molly resigned herself to joining them – squeezing next to Dexter and glaring at him for good measure.

"Hopefully hurt you a lot," Molly returned, leaning on her elbows, "anyone fancy entertaining me in any way?"

"I'll make out with you, if you like," Zak suggested with a grin.

"No, ta," Molly said with an eye roll, "any other suggestions?"

"Oh if only I was available," Tom said with an overly dramatic gesture. Lucy's best friend's guy. Not invivted. Go figure.

"Never stopped you before, mate," Zak returned, punching him in the shoulder. Queue laughter.

"You could always entertain yourself by walking down to the shop and getting us some more booze?"

"I'll give you a twenty," Tom suggested, pulling his wallet out his pocket and waving around a twenty pound note, "in return for change,"

"How much change?"

"Okay, how's this," Zak said, tossing a fiver onto the table, "you buy us a bottle of jagermeister and some cheep energy drink... you can have a third of the bottle,"

"A quarter," Tom corrected.

"For free?" Molly said, picking up the notes that had been tossed around and considering this for a moment.

"Classy," Dexter hissed at her, pulling out his own fiver, "so you'll do it?"

"Well I'm not walking to the shop on my own," Molly said finally, "I'll fall over in my heals and die,"

"I'll walk with you," Dexter said, standing up with a can of beer in his hands.

"Does it have to be you?" she asked, crossing my arms and grinning sarcastically at him, "only if I get to keep the change,"

"If it's less than a fiver, sure," Tom said, "and don't take forever, yeah?"

"Wouldn't want you to dehydrate," Molly agreed, pocketing the money and heading back indoors to grab her bag.

"Alcohol run, want anything?" She asked in the doorway, resigning herself to lugging her weight in alcohol back to Roxy's after several more orders were placed, "muggle alcohol," she pointed out when Lucy tried to order more Firewhiskey, "anyway, you're not even of age in the wizarding world – so you can forget it,"

"You can have some of mine," Roxy told her, sticking her tongue out at Molly. Molly returned the sentiment by lifting up her middle finger. Maybe she wasn't an adult _just_ yet.

"Come on Molly, no need for heartfelt goodbyes this time –it's a ten minute walk,"

"It's dark," Molly muttered, grabbing her handbag from the floor before following Dexter out the front door, "we might die, and then you'll be my last memory and quite frankly -"

"Ah, drunken ramblings," Dexter said with a fake nostalgic sigh, tripping over his feet in his attempt to be sarcastic and walk at the same time.

"So, Dexter," Molly said after a few minutes, "slept with anymore sixth years recently?"

"No, just the two," Dexter said back, nudging her with her elbow and causing her to have to take an extra few steps to stop herself falling over.

"What is it with the sixth years though, seriously, I actually heard one talking about how hot you were the other day?"

"Maybe it's just cause I'm a really nice person,"

"Right," Molly said with a half laugh, "no... I doubt it. Either way, what's your current count now? Four? Five?"

"Five," Dexter said, taking another sip of his beer, "if you count Vikki,"

"She counts herself," Molly said, "even if you think she's beneath you,"

"She was beneath me,"

"See , this is why we don't get on Dexter," Molly said with a shake of the head, plucking the beer out of his hand and taking a sip before handing it back to him, "I mean, most of the time you're an arrogant a-hole, but I can deal with that – but then with girls you're just..."

"Ah, come on Molly. Sixth years are only a year younger than us,"

"But_ Vikki_,"

"I liked her,"

"Really now? Cause if you really liked her then surely you would have, I don't know, _dated_ her,"

It was very dark, just as she had expected, and due to the frankly freezing December chill she wrapped her arms around herself as they walked quickly up the road and into the centre of the village: where the allure of the off-licence was pulling them both onwards.

"I would have done if she didn't start deluding herself into thinking that being slaggy is cool – I couldn't date her then, could I?"

"And yet you still slept with her," Molly said, pulling her handbag up her arm and looking downwards so that she didn't have to face the bitter wind head on.

"You're in a bad mood today," Dexter commented, "something gotten up your arse?"

"Like I'd talk about with you, you'd just laugh and call me frigid,"

"So romance issues?" Dexter suggested.

"No, that's just what you always do – laugh and call me frigid," He laughed at that.

"You make it so easier to insult you,"

"Likewise," Molly returned with a half smile, "it's irresistible,"

"Damn right,"

"So, if you apparently think you have some crazy charm how come you've never tried to hit on me?"

"It sounds like you're asking me to hit on you,"

"I'm not," Molly said, "and it wouldn't work either,"

"Hell, Molls, if I wanted us to get off we'd be making out by now,"

"Sod off," Molly said pulling her arms tighter around her, "you wouldn't be able to,"

"You're making it sound like a challenge,"

"That isn't what I meant," Molly said, flushing.

"Cause we've been alone for five minutes now, and if I wanted to make out with you I would be now,"

"Well, why don't you want to?"

"So you _do_ want me to make out with you?"

"No, shut up Dexter, that's not what I mean at all," Molly muttered irritable as they reached the little cluster of shops that marked the centre of Roxy's bit of town, "right, I'll get the drinks,"

"And I'll wait here,"

"Yeah," Molly said, stepping into the warm brightness of the off licence and blinking around for a few minutes. She could have sworn that she hadn't drunk that much, but it still seemed like the words were moving a little as she tried to focus and read them. She couldn't remember what Roxy had wanted for a long moment, as she stood deliberating over whether it was the blue or the orange that she'd asked for, before remembering she hadn't asked for an alcopop at all and disappearing to the other side of the little shop to pick out the right glass bottle.

The shop keeper didn't judge her even when she asked for a bottle of jagermeister to add to her hoard and handed over a good wad of notes (she was a teenager, he probably expected this sort of behaviour). Although he did look at her ID for a long time before allowing her to leave the stop, bottles jangling merrily at her side.

"Carry," Molly said, handing one of the bags over to Dexter as she tried to put her purse back inside her handbag. She found the clasp was hard to do up when her fingers were this numb and she was that drunk, but she managed eventually despite Dexter's continued huffing and sighing.

"So... you want to know why I'm not attracted to you, is that it?"

"Yes," Molly said with a sigh of relief, knowing that if she were sober she'd find this sort of question so demeaning she'd probably never have voiced it. Or thought it.

"Well I've known you since you were eleven,"

"Yeah," Molly said, taking his beer again and draining it completely before returning it to his waiting hands.

"And, you... well, when you were eleven you were... a bit... a bit of a geek. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but – you were a bit weird, you know. Not just the geek thing I mean – you were out and out special,"

"Damn straight," Molly said, trying to envision herself as the stumbling awkward a little too sarcastic eleven year old who no one quite understood. She'd been picked on quite a bit, but that had just been who she was – it had never really bothered her (except deep down, but then again everyone has their scars deep down). "Eugh, I need to pee," Molly added, glancing down at her feet.

"I mean, to be fair, you're a pretty nice looking girl,"

"Gee whiz, Dexter, stop it,"

"And I like you and everything," Dexter said with a shrug, "but we've been friends for too long,"

"True," Molly said, "and to be fair I can't stick you,"

"So what's up, Mollywobbles?" Dexter asked, stopping in the middle of the alleyway and leaning back against the lining fence. There was a lamppost emitting a warm orange light around them, and through that light Molly could see Dexter's vaguely interested expression.

"They're all, you know, _not single_. Again. Why do you think it is that I'm _always_ single?"

"Well, have you seen anyone that you want?" Dexter asked, artfully flicking his empty can of beer into the bush. Normally that might have sparked Molly off on a long lecture about the environment, but alcohol seemed to loosen all her usual moral standards a little. Particularly ones concerning not voicing things that made her seem a tad on the pathetic side.

"No," Molly admitted, "but I'm eighteen – surely I should have had some serious relationship by now?"

"Why?" Dexter asked, still leaning against the fence, "maybe you just haven't met anyone your type yet,"

"Do I even have a type?" Molly asked, putting her hand on her hip and staring gloomily up towards the sky, "Roxanne's type always seems interchangeable,"

"Forget Roxanne, you're Molly. Look, you've always been, eh... different to them, right? We're eighteen; no one's going to look down on you for not having a boyfriend any more Molly. It's not about beauty, or boys, or falling in love anymore. Everyone just expects you to be with someone who makes you happy. Are you happy?"

"Most of the time," Molly said grudgingly.

"Well then," Dexter said with a smug little smile.

"I didn't think it would be possible to find you any more annoying, Dex," Molly said with a grin, "but I could practically feel your arrogance seeping out there, it was revolting,"

"Glad to be of service," Dexter said with a return grin.

"You enjoyed that _so _much," She complained, "and then you just had to whack out the 'aren't you happy' card. Disgusting, Dexter, disgusting,"

"Oh come on Molly, you know what I mean. The days of drama should be behind us now, we're adults,"

"I'm an adult," Molly corrected, "and let's get home before my legs freeze off,"

"No, I need a minute," Dexter said – glancing up at the moon for a long moment.

"Look, I need the loo – can you not just hurry up,"

"I know you need the loo," Dexter grinned, "but I'm not leaving yet,"

"Oh come on," Molly said with an irritated sigh, "you're making me want to strangle myself. That would be so much less painful than _this_,"

"If being in a relationship makes you happy, be in a relationship; if, like you, you're a frigid bitch who can't stick the restrictions of having to spend too much time with a single person then... then just be alone forever!"

"I wish I was alone right now," Molly said with an eye roll, "I really need the loo now - this isn't funny anymore."

"There's a bush down there,"

"I'm not peeing in a bush!"

"I hope your enjoy pain then," Dexter said, stepping forwards then leaning against the lamppost for a long moment. "I might go in a minute, actually," Dexter said.

"I cannot physically pee in a bush,"

"Yeah, you can," Dexter said, "and we're not going anywhere until you do,"

"Are you purposefully an arsehole?"

"No, it just happens," Dexter grinned, "some people have natural talent,"

"I know people like that. I wish they were here."

"You love it," Dexter said, "remember, Molly, if you get thirst there's plenty to drink,"

"Stop it,"

"Water, water, drop drop drop," Dexter sang off key to the tune of some terrible song that's original lyrics were possibly even worse than his adaptation.

"I'll go if you go," Molly said with a sigh.

"Fine by me, hold," Dexter said, passing me the plastic bag and disappearing into the gloom for a moment – beyond the light of the lamp to the point that no one could see him even if they tried. Molly leant against the lamppost for a second and raised her eyes to the sky, shivering. Barely a minute later Dexter re-emerged.

"Easy,"

"For you maybe," She muttered, passing him both of the bags and her handbag before strolling into the darkness herself. She took a deep breath, swallowed back what was left of her dignity and squatted. "You better not be watching!" She called back out to Dexter.

"Believe me, Molly, even if you were as smoking hot as Erin I would sincerely and honestly not be watching you pee in a bush,"

"Fair play," Molly muttered, closing her eyes for a moment and pretending that she was someone else. She hadn't peed in a bush since she was around five years old, and this temporary deviation into childhood was all Dexter's fault.

It was hard to remind herself that she was an adult whilst trying to avoid pissing on her own feet.

"You done?"

"I had a very full bladder," Molly said upon returning back to the patch of light and finding Dexter deliberately looking at his watch.

"Evidently,"

"Shove off," she said, "and let's not tell people about this?"

"What? That you peed in a bush?"

"No," Molly said, "that we had an actual serious _conversation_,"

Dexter laughed and fell back into step with her, not giving her either of the bags full of clinking bottles back to her. "That's the beautiful thing about our relationship,"

"What relationship?" Molly questioned dryly.

"That we insult each other, rip on each other and continually piss each other off, but... deep down, we're actually good friends,"

"Very deep down,"

"Maybe a friend is a strong word?"

"Not as strong as arrogant bastard,"

"Two words,"

"Yeah, thanks Dexter, I'm eighteen years old and I don't know how to count to _two_,"

"Maybe that's why you're single,"

"You're single too,"

"Yeah," Dexter said with a shrug, "but I'm also getting laid,"

"Well," Molly shrugged as they reached the door to Roxy's house. Molly wondered whether she might be able to disappear now, whether it was late enough, but also decided that she didn't want to escape as much as she had done previously. Instead she quite wanted to join in laughing at the rest of them being drunk, maybe convince someone into playing drunken exploding snap (which was always a good laugh until somebody lost an eyebrow, and still a good laugh if your eyebrows remained safe from the carnage) or sticking on the TV and watching some muggle documentary about genetic engineering.

She wanted to drink her share of the alcohol she'd carried, not mention the nearly-pissing-all-over-her-shoes incident and maybe exploit her own little way of flirting (mostly seated in getting angry about some issue or other, as she couldn't deny she loved a good old debate) with, well, it would have to be Zak or Dexter essentially. Maybe being an adult was about accepting your own short comings and deciding that, in reality, it didn't matter if she didn't feel like a party right now – because tomorrow she might do, or she might not. Right now she felt the need to produce a boyfriend, but most of the time she didn't have a time to divide her life up anymore to fit one in. No, it was okay to be a walking contradiction, "we all know I'm a frigid bitch," Molly shrugged.

"Remember, Molly, _happiness_," Dexter said.

"You know I don't like abstract nouns," Molly said.

"Oh, _elation _then,"

"Hogwarts really needs to give lessons on grammar," Molly said with a sigh, watching grimly as Dexter threw his arms up into the air like some hero as he re-entered the house party with extra alcohol. Maybe she would go home, after all – there was plenty of time in her adult life to go to parties and get drunk, most probably with the same people that were hanging around today.

"Molly wobbles, your prize awaits," Zak said from the doorway, retrieving a shot glass from somewhere and beginning to mix her drink in a plastic cup – provided by Uncle George to avoid the unavoidable broken glass situation.

"Fine," Molly muttered, tottering back through the door in her stupid heels and taking the glass with a grimace. It wasn't every day you got free alcohol, "Dexter, if that was your hand anywhere near my arse then I implore you to chop it off before I do,"

"That was me actually," Zach said cheerfully.

"I'm going nowhere your arse, thanks," Dexter added.

"Just give me my drink," Molly muttered under her breath, collapsing back onto the sofa with a world-weary sigh that much surpassed her age. Dexter sent her a smirk and she rolled her eyes fondly. He may a first class prat, but she found his ability to be a complete tosser sort of endearing too.

"Dance Molly," Lucy said, grabbing her hand and pulling her back up to her feet. She wound up faux-waltzing around the room with Erin, conning Ian out of a little more than the promised quarter of a bottle and eventually throwing a glass of water in Dexter's direction. But that was okay.

She was only eighteen, after all.


	2. Seventeen

_At seventeen life was all about production; exam results, ideas, people worth your time – finding things to fall in love with, and then running with it..._

Everything about the seventeenth year of her life was that little bit better than the previous teen years. The change had been coming for while, but it certainly felt much more real when Molly was suddenly '_of age_.' Realistically the only change between being sixteen and seventeen was that she was allowed to do magic (and the addition of her mother's choice of archaic watch, which she had yet to accidentally flush down a toilet), but Molly found that fact strange enough in itself; she hadn't actually been able to exploit this new freedom yet, but soon enough the Christmas holidays would start and she would be able to drive Roxanne crazy by throwing magic in a face at every occasion. Maybe quite literally, too, because all her older family members had taught her there was nothing quite as funny as performing magic on someone who was not old enough to undo it.

It was possible they had taught her this a little too well.

All the classmates and friends that cluttered up Molly's life were shifting. For a start, the short eleven year olds boys she'd eaten with on her first day of Hogwarts now all seemed to tower above her and were often to be found talking about 'working out' (Molly hadn't realised this is something people actually did, or how competitive males could be about things that were seated in vanity). It had been a bit of a shock to return after the summer and find that most of them were bordering on six foot when previously she'd been level with them. Since this she had concluded that growing _upwards_ did not necessarily mean _growing up_.

The change in the girls who she'd shared a dorm with had been less pronounced and given the amount of time she spent in their company she hadn't really noticed. But at some point, although she couldn't quite tell you when, they'd all stopped looking like children playing dress-up.

Molly was beginning to realise that it was unnecessary to get quite so angry all the time: she felt like she'd spent every day since she was thirteen fighting everyone in the world just to assert herself as actually having a personality, which apparently was this big surprising thing. She'd been placed in a box at eleven years old and six years later the realisation that she didn't actually care was beginning to hit home. She was learning that she didn't have to be quite so resistant to absolutely everything, and it was quite acceptable for her to follow the crowd every once in awhile.

The older she became the more she began to realise how young she was.

_Everything_ was better now though; anorexia levels were down on previous years and the only self harmers left were those who hid their scars. As everyone slowly shifted into a higher state where it was just _about_possible to feel comfortable with yourself, levels of angst were no longer required to make you interesting and drama had been redefined as 'tiresome' rather than inanely fascinating. People were more accepting, certainly, and for the first time in her life Molly was beginning to feel like she wasn't being judged for every decision she ever made.

"Molly, is this supposed to be a bra?" Erin demanded as Molly emerged from the bathroom after brushing her teeth on the last Saturday before term ended for the Christmas holiday.

Of course there were still side effects: remnants of teenage angst not yet dissolved by experience.

"Oh God," Roxanne said, looking up from where she was packing her trunk, "don't start with Molly and her bras – she has a flat chested complex."

"I'm sorry?" Erin asked, passing the offending article between her hands and raising her slightly over plucked eyebrows at her, "Molly, that's not a bra – it's practically a boob-job."

"I like padded bras," Molly said, flushing slightly and holding her hand out for it.

"No, I _like_ padded bras," Roxanne said, "you just like lying."

"Explain," Erin said, poking the gel bra and throwing herself back on her bed.

"Everyone thinks I'm flat chested," Molly muttered, snatching the bra and folding it down the side of her trunk, "and I'm not – the bra just _confirms _the fact."

"By doubling your chest size," Simrath commented, "smart."

Molly very deliberately shut the lid of her trunk. The bra thing was an issue Roxanne liked to bring up whenever she'd deemed that Molly was being overly critical or irrational. Molly Weasley was not vain; it was just that after years spent being _slightly_ picked on and worn down there had been occasion when her self esteem had taken a hit –thus convincing herself that everyone viewed her as an unattractive twit with all the sex appeal of a curried gherkin (it wasn't that she wanted everyone to think she was attractive, she just didn't want everyone to think she was _un_attractive). And so, she wore absurdly padded 'bust booster' bras. It was nothing to be _ashamed_ of, exactly.

"What would happen if we burst one of them?" Erin asked with a pretty grin, "what's the gel actually like?"

"Stand on one and find out," Roxanne said dryly, "so I'm all packed – finished everyone?"

"Wait," Erin said, deliberating for a second, "do I need to bring both trunks home – or just one?"

Erin liked clothes. No, _Molly_ liked clothes (well, she _wore _clothes) but unlike Erin she didn't have a sort of addiction to purchasing new things every two minutes so she had something different to wear every weekend (once, Erin had been called an 'outfit repeater' and now she was a chronic shopaholic – these sorts of things happened to everyone, Molly reasoned, and anyway if Lucy hadn't spent years pointing out how she had a bigger chest then maybe everything would have been fine...).

"It's two weeks," Molly shrugged, "how many skirts can you need?"

"Fourteen?" Roxanne suggested, "look, decide later – I need to go meet Wilson."

"Go on your own then," Erin said, "this is important."

"You need to see Tom too," Roxanne said, "might as well go together."

"If I see him he might dump me," Erin said, "maybe I do need two suitcases?"

"Don't be daft, Erin – why would he dump _you_?" Simrath said, "you guys have been going out for like...ages," Erin shrugged glumly and started folding up her socks. Roxanne bit her lip.

"Eighteen months," Molly prompted, "that's a long time."

"Yeah, and he's fed up of me," Erin said, "before me he could just flirt with whoever and I just, eurgh, I know he's going to break up with me. I'm not _stupid._"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do over the holidays," Roxanne said, "I mean, given Dad ruled that Wilson can't stay over."

"-he said he could stay for two nights, Roxanne," Molly said impatiently, "quit whining about it – can you imagine what _my_ Dad would say if asked him if I could have a guy stay for a week?"

"In Fred's room!" Roxanne complained, "do you know what the means, Molly? No sex for two weeks!"

Erin laughed, running her hands through her hair and shutting her second trunk decisively. The boyfriend talk had continued from last year, only this time Molly was either treated to Erin and Roxanne discussing everything and anything to do with sex (although actually, Molly supposed that _this_ time last year had been when all that had started) comparing just about anything and everything they could think of, or else they would complain about the woes of being in love and having a boyfriend (the constant fear of being dumped, missing the other person, not having as much time and having to deal with unnecessary arguments when they were being stupid) whilst continually assuring Molly that she was _lucky_ she didn't have a boyfriend.

They seemed to think that by 'dating' they'd picked up gems of knowledge that Molly could only dream of (unlikely) and that they were therefore more mature. Molly hated people thinking that they were better than her. Sure, she was beginning to accept that being the best at everything was both tiring, unnecessary and impossible – so she'd stopped being quite so anal about her grades and creating arguments with people just to prove that she knew more than they did (unless they were being ignorant, because then they were asking for it), but she still hated it when people assumed she would be rubbish at something for no reason.

"He loves you," Roxanne said, "forget about it."

"Fine," Erin said, hoping to her feet and glancing in the mirror briefly, "coming, guys?"

"Not to watch you snog, no." Molly said.

"I've got to finish this letter," Simrath said, "then I've got a detention – so I'll see you all at lunch."

"I'll see if there's anyone in the common room or something." Molly sighed.

"Two weeks," Roxanne complained, "letters just aren't the same, you know?"

"Sneak him in." Dexter suggested, looking up from the table he was working at and raising an eyebrow."

"Grow a pair." Molly suggested.

"Get a life, Molly." Dexter added.

"Relevant, or...?"

"No, just for kicks."

"Right, well," Molly said sitting down opposite him on the desk, "those two are ditching me, so I guess you're my entertainment for the next couple of hours."

"I'm trying to work, actually." Dexter said lightly.

"Get a life."

"Touché," Dexter said, setting his quill back on his desk and looking up at her, "what did you want me to do?"

"What do you want to do with your life, Dex?" Molly asked lightly, glancing up at the ceiling for a moment.

"I'm going to move to Australia."

"Really?" Molly asked, looking at him unexpectedly.

"No," Dexter said, "but it would be a great way to avoid you. Anyway, Molls, how long have we known each other? How do you still not know the answer to the question?"

"Well, mostly I don't listen to a word you say, but if you're meaning 'pissing me off' then I didn't realise that was your _whole_ future plan."

"It's certainly part of it," Dexter said, "I want to be a curse breaker."

"So you need pretty good grades?"

"Yeah," Dexter said, "but sadly, I got distracted by a certain Molly Weasley asking me stupid questions and therefore, it's probably never going to happen."

"Ah, well – maybe you could move to Australia?"

"As long as you don't follow me."

"I'm not promising anything; I might miss you too much. Although I admit it's unlikely. How's all the muscle work going?" Molly asked, pointedly nodding towards Dexter's ever expanding arms with an eyebrow raise. Recently her male friends had been vastly unoriginal in their attempts to outdo each other – she rather thought that none of them could beat Ian (although his muscles weren't good muscles – she strongly suspected that his arms were bigger than her freaking waist), and that Zak would always be the weedy runt.

"Brilliantly, as you can see," Dexter said, stretching out his arms, "how are Erin and Tom?"

"She thinks he's going to dump her." Molly said.

"Is he?"

"Why would you ask me about something like that?" Molly asked, crossing her arms and shaking her head at him.

"Point. How's life as a spinster going?"

"Wonderfully," Molly returned, nice and relaxing, "you ever been in love, Dex?"

"Apart from with you?" Dexter suggested dryly.

"Well, that goes without saying," Molly returned, "everyone's in love with me."

"True, and yes," Dexter said, "what's with all the big questions?"

"Nearly half way through Sixth year, a lot's going to change. We're going to be like... adults and such,"

"Some of us are."

"God, you're the limit. I think I'd rather go watch Erin get her heartbroken."

"Go then," Dexter said, "I'm busy anyways."

"Argh, don't be dull," Molly said, leaning on the desk and glancing round the common room for anyone else she could talk to, "I've eaten fruit with more conversational skills than you – give me something I can work with here."

"Okay, Molly, have _you_ ever been in love? Other than with yourself?"

"I fell in love with this pasta once; it was the best thing I've ever eaten," Molly suggested, taking Dexter's book from the other side of the table and flicking through it, "but other than that, I'd say no..."

"Maybe you should get yourself boyfriend and quit inflicting your company on me."

"Who the hell would I fall in love with around here?" Molly questioned, glancing around the common room again, "God, what are my options? _Rodger_? Zak? Ian?"

"Rodger,"

"Sod off."

"Make one out of dead corpses," Dexter suggested, "then you could make one to fit your needs."

"What? Agrees with everything I say?"

"Nah, Molly, you love the arguing."

"See, I do love some things," Molly grinned, "I'm not soulless, like Erin would have you believe."

"Not people,"

"People are rubbish. Anyway, love is just so... it's so bloody abstract, you know? I wouldn't even know if I_was_ in love. I'd probably just pretend I wasn't because I'm messed up like that."

"You said it," Dexter said, shutting his text book with the look of someone who was just about to give up, "oh who cares," he muttered, "it's nearly Christmas – now, the others are playing exploding snap in the dorm, you wanna to come?"

"Not particularly," Molly said, "but as you asked so nicely."

"Are you sure you can fit it in around your busy schedule?"

"For you, Dex, I'd do anything," Molly said, accompanied with sarcasm so thick you could taste it and an unimpressed crossing of the arms.

Yeah, at seventeen years old Molly was beginning to learn not to be quite so darn bitter.

*

"Oh, bugger," Simrath said, the first one to join Molly in the dorm that evening with her face scrunched up in displeasure, "Molly, I'm going to _fail_ everything – I just had the detention with Longbottom, and he asked me this really stupid question and my mind just went blank. He went really pink and was like 'Miss Virdee, do you realise that was a first year level question' I've never been so embarrassed in my life."

"Neville said that?" Molly asked, "Merlin, Sim, what was the question? Was it like what makes plants grow? Sunlight and water, or...?"

"Something about Devil Snare," Simrath said, throwing herself onto her bed and burying her face in her pillow, "I'm going to fail everything Molly!"

"It's just Herbology," Molly said, "that's not everything, and anyway you're not going to fail. You always pull it back at the end, and... You've got a year this time."

"But the exams are so important," Simrath said, sitting up again and running her hands through her hair distractedly – a habit which usually ended up with Simrath's hair being three times the normal size and her getting even more stressed out by the levels of self-inflicted frizz, "what if we just mess up? We need these grades!"

"It will be fine," Molly said, "and don't take it out on your hair; you know it'll only make things worse. I don't do Herbology, but maybe get one of the others to help you out? Or you could always ask Neville, he'd be delighted if you asked for extra help. No point stressing about it now, the holidays start tomorrow."

"Okay," Sim said, "you're so wise Molly."

"You were talking about concrete stuff," Molly said, lying back on her bed and staring at the ceiling, "none of this... love stuff floating around."

"Abstract nouns again?"

"Precisely," Molly said, glancing over at her friend, "I can sort grades and stuff. Things you can just _produce_, they're easy. Not love and things though."

"I've never been in love either, if that helps," Simrath said, "can you be in love if you've never really dated anyone, though? I mean, none of this love at first sight stuff... just... it's got to take time,"

"Who knows?" Molly asked the ceiling (she wasn't particularly sure whether she was expecting an answer – stranger things had happened at Hogwarts) , just as the door banged open an Erin appeared, her normally perfect hair flying around her face. Molly sat up quickly and watched as Erin disappeared into the bathroom, half closing the door behind her.

Moments later Roxanne appeared behind her, seemingly out of breath, and shook her head "I don't know," Roxanne said simply, "she didn't..."

Molly rolled off her bed and tentatively pushed open the bathroom door. Erin was leaning against the counter in the bathroom looking very pale.

"Did he...?" Roxanne asked, acting as Molly's shadow as they gingerly stepped into the bathroom. Roxanne took her place next to Erin against the bathroom counter, Simrath took the seat on the edge of the bathtub leaving Molly to put down the toilet lid and perch there.

"He said he wants to talk," Erin said quietly, "he says that he wants to meet me tomorrow before the train goes and that we 'need to talk'."

"Oh god, I'm sorry Erin," Roxanne said, "he's a bastard for doing it right before Christmas."

"No he's not," Erin said, "he's not a bastard! This way I've got two weeks to sort of, get over it a bit. Before school and everything, he's not a bastard if he were a bastard then... but he's not, he just doesn't _want me_anymore."

"That's not true," Simrath added, "I'm sure that's not true at all."

"Look, maybe he's not going to break up with you," Molly suggested carefully, "maybe he... maybe he just wants to talk?"

"Don't be stupid, Molly," Erin spat out, "of course he's going to break up with me! That's what 'we need to talk' means – it means I'm going to break up with you tomorrow. He's just letting me know in advance so I don't like, make a fool of myself by crying on him. He's so _considerate._"

Molly didn't particularly like being called stupid, but then what really did she know about _love_? She could think herself superior to her friends all she liked, but when it came down to it she had nothing better to offer Erin than something that was apparently 'stupid' – and she couldn't even argue her case otherwise. All the insight she had about all things relationships were mostly due to watching her parent's strange marriage, or one of the large variety of couples to chose from within her family: she'd watched Rose's relationship with Scorpius from afar; watched Ron and Hermione's arguments; seen the comical affair with Roxanne and Rodger; she'd seen her grandparent's gravitate around themselves and their children and she'd seen her male cousin's regular casual flings with girls of all different sorts of varieties.

She could call that experience all she liked, but when it came down to it she had more experience trying to remove stains from her clothes so her mother didn't chastise her for being clumsy than she did with the ins and outs of _relationships_.

Molly Weasley was a seventeen year old girl who knew more complicated cleaning than dating. Sometimes, Molly was easily able to shrug this off her shoulders but occasionally she wondered how she could be so determined to know everything and leave some things so woefully uncovered?

It wasn't like she'd never had a boyfriend. She had somehow manage to produce one once (it wasn't her fault, either, _he'd _been the one to initiate it) and it had been a pain in the arse. There were levels of awkwardness that made her want to weep (as if Molly wasn't already hideously awkward without adding a supposed boyfriend into the mixture) and he – Jack Smythe, Hufflepuff's resident creeper – had continually followed her around like a lost puppy for three bloody weeks before she'd managed to get shot of the bloke. Mostly she preferred saying she'd never had a boyfriend to admitting to any association with him, but it had happened – she'd had a boyfriend. She'd never had a _relationship _though.

Not like Erin who just by being her pretty ,blonde, nice self always managed to have some guy hanging around her – passing her notes in class, seeking her out in the hallway and flirting with her - wanting to take away her title of singledom and _date _her. Even Tom, who'd previously been known as a bit of a flirt had been interested to the point of _eighteen _months. It wasn't like Molly was jealous; it was just that she flat out did not understand.

And that was what bothered her.

She could maintain the fact that she didn't care about anything to do with _boys_ and_ relationships_ and _vanity_all she liked, but the fact still remained that she wore 'bust booster' bras and tried a little _too _hard to understand.

"I always thought he wasn't good enough for you, anyway." Roxanne said, wrapping an arm around her. Erin wasn't crying, but staring at the carpet of the bathroom as if she was in a state of extreme shock. Molly tried very hard to comprehend what it might be like to lose someone you had spent eighteen months of your life with so intimately, but mostly she drew up a blank. She imagined it was pretty damn shit, but she couldn't invoke an emotional response in herself. Maybe Erin had a stain that she needed help with or something, then Molly could actually make herself useful?

Roxanne sent Molly a look and, very helpfully, mouthed 'insult him.' Later, Molly made a note to thank Roxanne and maybe allow her fifteen minutes of unadulterated bitching about how her father was a ginger fascist for not letting Wilson sleep in her bed for two weeks, because if there was one thing Molly was good at it was insulting people. And stain-removal (she'd got ink stains _down_ now – but was still coming up with a blank when it came to mud).

"Honestly, Erin, you're well shot of him," Roxanne continued.

"Doesn't his slight lisp really piss you off?" Molly asked, "because it's not even all the time, just when he reads stuff out from textbook or letters or whatever."

"His voice is so low too!" Simrath exclaimed, "I can't hear what he says most of the time."

"And that stupid walk," Roxanne said, "you _know_ you always told me how that annoyed you?"

"He's so in love with himself, anyway," Molly continued, "his own opinion of his self worth is so grossly miscalculated, I actually find it physically difficult not to make snide comments about simple addition whenever I'm near him."

"And he uses you to show off to his friends, sometimes," Simrath added, "bit of a tosser, really."

Erin remained completely silent and looked at the floor. Molly sent a desperate look at Roxanne as if to try and communicate the fact that _it wasn't working_. If anything with every insult Erin was beginning to look even paler.

"Molly," Roxanne said eventually, "have you _finally_ plucked your eyebrows?"

"Yes," Molly said, folding her arms and shaking her head at her.

"Thank God," Roxanne grinned, "I was beginning to think I'd have to put a waxing strip on your emerging monobrow whilst you were asleep,"

Erin let out a breathy laugh.

"Really, Roxy, I know the future you intended for those waxing strips – so don't you dare put them anywhere near my face," Molly returned, watching as Erin smiled again – she bit her lip and closed her eyes for a second, "anyway," Molly continued, spurred on by the success of the previous comment, "at least you can_see_ my eyebrows,"

"And your moustache," Roxanne added in a sing song voice.

"I don't have a moustache!" Molly said, bringing a hand subconsciously to her face, "my face is completely bald, thank you very much."

"Well, you do have a_ little_ moustache."

"I've never in my life had a moustache."

"Come on, admit it Mols -"

"- I don't believe in lying."

"You lie about your chest size!"

"I _emphasise_ my chest size!"

"You're a dirty liar, Molly Weasley." Roxanne declared loudly. Erin was now watching the comments fly between them, the verbal duel of sorts, with a fond sort of smile across her face.

"Fine," Molly said, "I'll get some normal bras."

"Seriously?" Simrath asked, looking up at her in surprise, "you're losing the padding?"

"Erin can stab them if she like," Molly shrugged, burying her hands in the pockets of her robes and looking up at her, "see what happens when you burst one."

"You don't know how long I've been waiting for this day," Roxanne said, hoisting herself up so she was sat on the sink – the taps digging into her back as she kicked her legs, "we'll throw a goodbye party."

"Everyone's going to be pretty damn confused when your chest disappears." Simrath grinned.

"It's just," Erin said, looking up quickly before shaking her head, the three of them went completely silent the second she opened her mouth and looked towards her, "I lost my virginity to the guy, you know? And I'm so_used _to him, I just... I don't know what I'm going to do," She finished miserably, "I... I really _love_ him."

Molly balled up her fists and pressed them into her thighs. Yes, she was slowly beginning to be more comfortable with who she was and no longer felt that she had to exaggerate everything about herself so that people didn't continue viewing her as the sarcastic and misunderstood eleven year old she'd once been. She knew that she couldn't be the best at everything and that the reason she was so arrogant about her own abilities was rooted in her dislike of herself (not dislike, maybe, _dissatisfaction_ was a better word) – because at least she was good at _some _things.

And now she was older – and by the official wizarding terms she was an_ adult_ – she was beginning to let things from the past let ago a little bit... but, she _still _hated the fact that her friend was sat there, hurting and there was literally nothing she could do to help because honestly she was utterly clueless.

Later, after Simrath had volunteered to go steal some chocolate from the kitchens and they'd engaged in a late-night, end-of-term, entirely necessarily long bitch about most of the people they knew (Tom being a number one target) Molly lay awake in her bed and thought about things. Eventually she decided that maybe it was okay that she hated everything about love (and oh, what a paradox) simply because she didn't _get_ it, because that was who she was – Molly Weasley, cynical and naive. At least about some things.

Then she reminded herself about the truth of the matter: she was seventeen, which was far too young to be falling in love anyway and she had a whole lifetime ahead of her for relationships that might _actually_ last instead of ending up in distraught-Erins and mopey-Roxannes (which was inevitably the result when anyone dated as a teenager, apart from about six people in the world who'd found 'true love' – either that or had become so used to each other that they couldn't be bothered to date anyone else). In reality, if Tom didn't break up with Erin tomorrow morning she'd pretend that she hadn't said all the stuff about his annoying lisp, his absurdly low voice, or his bloody annoying walk and go back to fluttering her eyelashes at him like a first class twit. And she'd be _happy_ about it.

Molly didn't think she'd ever understand that, but then again – she was _only_ seventeen.


	3. Sixteen

_At sixteen life was all about euphemism: about having sex and about not having sex, about emulating adulthood years too soon, about pretending to be something much smoother than you were..._

* * *

><p>Molly hating being sixteen. Fifth year meant that the pressure simply didn't end and instead of the usual paragraph at the end of each letter asking about school work, her father had had two introductory paragraphs about how stressful OWLS were at the beginning of every letter, followed by a paragraph assuring her that he knew she'd get O's in everything (surprisingly, this didn't actually help), concluded with a paraphrased summary of everything he'd said in the first paragraph at the end – the snippets of information about how various family members were doing was a condensed version sandwiched in the middle. Molly had taken to weighing the letters on her potions scales before deciding whether it would be too depressing to open and reading Lucy's letters instead.<p>

There were rumour going round that she was either a lesbian or hadn't reached puberty yet after she'd asserted the fact that she wouldn't date any of the boys in their year if someone paid her, although this might have been a slight exaggeration because, well, Molly did have the odd soft spot for some of them. Really, though, all Erin and Roxanne (who was, at the minute, going by Roxie with an _ie_, in some weird 'I'm so individual' fad replicated by anyone who's names finished in y) had achieved by their childish attempts at 'dating' was securing the fact that all the Gryffindor forth year boys jeered at them when they walked by – something which, incidentally, they appeared to have taken as a compliment.

In fact, Rox_ie_ was being so god damn annoying lately Molly couldn't wait for the Christmas holidays to start – two days and counting – where she could accidentally forget to not reply to her letters and not have to spend so much time with her. Of course, that was assuming that Rox_ie_actually wanted to talk to her – because increasingly it seemed her cousin was viewing her more as an annoying tag along than an actual friend, which was beyond frustrating. Molly hated the fact that none of her friends understood her.

And it was all Erin's fault.

No, actually, it was Erin's parents fault for having passed down the genetics which meant that Erin was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way, that she was both clever and funny and, this was important, a complete flirt. This meant she'd picked up one of the most popular guys in the year. It had been unexpected because Erin wasn't one of the elitist, slightly orange populars herself – she was friends with Molly, for goodness sake, and everyone knew that being friends with sarcastic and slightly bitter Molly Weasley wasn't going to buy you any friends.

It had caused a lot of changes. Molly had endured weeks of listening to Roxanne – who was then just plain Roxy – complain about how Erin didn't care about them anymore, which was a bit hypocritical considering she'd been ecstatic about the match and convinced that it would make them all instantly popular (why she even wanted that, Molly didn't know), but eventually Erin had managed to balance things to minimise Rox_ie_'s complaining and still hung out with her boyfriend and some of his friends. The calm before the storm, more or less.

Because then Erin had come back to the dorm, biting her lip and folding her clothes repeatedly until, on Simrath's third time of asking her if she was okay, Erin had blurted out that she and Tom had _done stuff._

And so, it had begun.

"Molliee!" Roxanne called, causing Molly to grit her teeth and resist the urge to find her birth certificate and throw it in her cousin's face. Maybe she was paranoid, but she could definitely the hear the difference when someone was envisioning her name spelt with the abomination that was an _ie_ending. And Roxanne was guilty. "Rodger says that he'll take me out to dinner over the Christmas holidays."

"Where to?" Molly asked irritably. "Burger Palace?"

"Pronto's Pizza Place." Roxanne gushed, throwing herself on top of her bed and looking nothing short of gleeful: if anyone tried to take Molly to bloody Pronto's Pizza Place and call it dinner, she'd decimate them. Yes, she liked their stuff crusts – but the idea that Roxanne was physically capable of being excited about having a date in Pronto's Pizza Place was tragic.

If Molly was to characterise everything she hated about the opposite sex, and human kind in general, into a singular human form that form would probably look an awful lot like Rodger. He was a mediocre Quidditch player (automatically meaning half his brain cells were occupied in making sure he had multiple opportunities a day to take his top off, which was unfortunate considering he looked like a toaster. Molly maintained that fifteen years old were not capable of having nice torsos and yes, she'd been caught looking at some of the seventh year Quidditch players before, but being on the Quidditch team didn't automatically mean you were a sex symbol). He was cocky, nerdy and a complete prat. He made feminism look like it'd regressed by several centuries simply by the way he looked at the sevenths years who'd probably had boob jobs or, like Molly, wore extreme push-up bras. He'd date anyone that looked at him more than twice because he was on a mission to make his transition into 'manhood' (read: prathood) look effortless and easy – AKA Rodger wanted to get laid.

Then again, Molly now spent so much time watching as her classmates tried to pretend they knew everything about sex that it wasn't even amusing anymore. Everything was a euphemism, sex was hilarious and the hottest topic remained _which couples had done it._

Before fifth year, Molly could have named the girls that it was rumoured weren't virgins on one hand (although, the fact that no one ever bothered to tell Molly the gossip probably meant that there could have been more). Now, there seemed to have been a sudden explosion of _sexual activity._

He did this to her, her hand went there, they had sex in that broom cupboard.

It was acceptable for everyone to run around sleeping with people, being a virgin was now akin to how Molly always imagined being a mudblood used to be – a status to be hushed up or, where possible, gotten rid of as soon as possible.

Erin had slept with Tom. Molly tried very hard to be reasonable about it and not condemn the whole thing, because they had been dating six months and that didn't seem completely ridiculous - of course, she was crazily young but, well, they were in love. She'd allowed it.

Then Rox_ie_ had fallen into the trap of not wanting to be left behind, which meant that she'd selected Rodger, who was on the same fruitless mission; both of them attempting to journey into realms of awkward and uncomfortable passion together. Whatever, Molly had lost all respect for her cousin/best friend the day Rox_ie_had decided that to be slutty was to be cool.

Now, the only thing anyone in her dorm could talk about was the big s-e-x and after recounting this experience until it made Molly's ears bleed with excruciating detail (after the equally annoying 'it's just sex you know, you just... I can't explain – you'll have to wait and see' that Erin had delivered with such decadence) it was very high up there on the list of things she didn't want to talk about... along with why she'd let Lucy cut her hair into a bob (I thought _you weren't vain_, Molly); exactly what she was going to do with the rest of her life and anything related to Georgina Simpson. Because she was a first class bitch.

Either way Roxy's desire to not-be-left-behind and resulted in the speedy execution of the deal, and even more well practiced '_well one day you'll know'_by her dear cousin and now growingly disgusting conversations between Roxy and Erin about _what next?_

She was so uncomfortable sitting anywhere near them these days she was beginning to think she might end up sitting with her sister at lunch instead – even if it meant crawling her sorry arse over to the Hufflepuff table and listening to her idiotic friends talk about boys like they were gods who could fix the fact that they all hated themselves more than they hated a lack of community and disloyalty (ruddy Hufflepuffs). Molly knew full well that boys couldn't fix a damn thing and it was frustrating that her friends couldn't see that she was actually the more mature one of the bunch – whilst they raced along with the other conforming idiots acting as though the fact that they'd had sex with a couple of nerdy, spotty, teenagers made them really grown and cool... completely oblivious to the fact that they were being so childish that it made her want to pull her gut out of her throat.

Molly was entirely sure that she would never have sex. Well, no, she would... but for a start they weren't old enough (she'd only just turned sixteen, damnit) and she'd wait until there was some really great guy before she hoped into bed with them, then detailed the whole experience to her friends whilst they either tried to use their pillow to smother their giggles, or in Molly's case, just go right ahead and smother herself.

"Molly," Rox_ie_said loudly, "you could at least_try_to fit in."

"Why would I want to?" Molly returned grumpily, throwing her things in her trunk and slamming it shut with a grimace – since Roxanne had gone about reinventing herself to be some un-virginal grown up, or whatever she thought she was emulating through all this crap, their friendship had been both sidelined and tense.

"I'm not asking you to go _do it_," Rox_ie_ retorted, putting her hand on her hip and looking at Molly with her eyes narrowed, "you're not _ready_, anyway."

"Sod off." Molly spat, balling her hands in her pockets and frowning – the audacity of Roxanne to think that she could possibly be more mature than her made her insides burn and the superiority she seemed to feel because she'd slept with _Rodger _of all people was plain ridiculous.

"You've never even _kissed _anyone."

"So?" Molly demanded. "Who cares? You're so... immature to think that it matters."

"It would be nice," Rox_ie _said, "if you could try and be supportive."

"Then stop acting like an idiot," Molly said, kicking her trunk before muttering, "I'm going to dinner." and disappearing down the stairs.

Erin was sat with Tom and Molly knew that she wasn't exactly a hot commodity with his friends and didn't particularly feel like subjecting herself to more of the endless teasing that always seemed to follow her around – not that she cared, it would just be nice to be able to eat a meal without having someone throw some food down her top and then declare that it was the first thing that had ever gotten into Molly's bra. Especially when she was arguing with Roxanne, which she hated doing.

Instead, Molly folded her arms and trudged over to the Hufflepuff table, plopping down next to Lucy and sending her murderous gaze at the table.

Molly hated all of it. She hated all the expectations, the digs and the constant tension between them. She couldn't sit there and listen to Erin talking about sodding positions without wanting to curl up into a ball or run away. She hated fifth year. She hated feeling like she was the only person who didn't fit in, in a sea of friends who no longer seemed to understand her: Roxanne, who'd been her best friend since the day she was born, was suddenly someone alien and foreign. It was uncomfortable.

"Hey, Molly," Lucy said, looking up from where she was bent over a piece of parchment with Rose. Lucy had always been so much more delicate than herself. Molly, who stumbled through life with regular trips and falls, lacked the grace. They were just different. Lucy would probably fit in more with Erin and Roxanne with her unshakable desire to be liked. Molly seemed to _want_to be hated. "Rose came over to help me with my Defence essay." Lucy continued.

"You could have asked me." Molly said, helping herself to a plate feeling content to sit and brood.

"Dad said not to disturb you too much from your studying." Lucy admitted, shrugging as she pulled another piece of parchment from her bag and scrawled her name across the top. _Lucie._

"Not you too?" Molly demanded, pulling the piece of parchment out of Lucy's hands and staring at the letter. "Lucy, that doesn't even make sense! You know your name would sound completely different it was spelt like that? It's ridiculous."

"Ignore her." Rose told a rather crestfallen Lucy.

"Fine." Molly muttered, slamming down her knife and fork and folding her arms – aiming for a dramatic exit as she stalked out of the Great Hall. Her stronghold on her emotions didn't hold, however, because the second she'd walked past the last of the eating students she could feel the tears bubbling up in her eyes and spilling over.

_Why was it all so difficult?_

"Molly! _Molly_!" Rose called after her, following as Molly barrelled into the girl's toilets and started furiously wiping her cheeks clean of tears. "Molly," Rose said, leaning against the counter and giving such a Hermione-ish look that Molly wanted to rebel against it and go kick a House Elf, "look, fifth year is hard –"

Molly folded her arms, torn between sulking and feeling immature, or giving it up and feeling like a push over.

"-it's Rox_ie_and bloody Roger. She's so -"

"Yeah, Mols, I know," Rose said, "look, things get a bit crazy when everyone suddenly to decide to get it on. But it's just... It's just sex, Molly. It's important and it's not important."

"Is she going to regret it?"

Rose made a face, "Well, in about a year she'll probably regret it, then in another three she probably won't care, and then maybe when you've got kids you'll start to care again. The sex obsession, it's just one of those things – everyone just goes a bit crazy. Everyone tries to pretend that it doesn't matter to them, then, later it won't matter anymore."

"I'm so left out," Molly muttered, "why are they leaving me out just because they've all gone and had sex with -?"

"-look," Rose said, "people just make it into a big deal for awhile. In a year, this isn't going to make a difference. People just act like it's the shit for awhile."

"You slept with Scorpius."

"Yeah," Rose said, "and it was pretty good I suppose."

"You don't sound very convinced."

"Dom's assured me it's better when the guy actually knows what he's doing," Rose said with an eye roll, "you've just got to survive this year, okay? Everything gets better from this point onwards. Don't stress."

"I'm just fed up of Roxanne acting like she's more mature than me."

"You're both mature in different ways," Rose shrugged, taking a seat on the sink and watching me carefully, "she's better with people than you are."

"She tries to impress everyone."

"That's what people do, Mols."

"I don't." Molly muttered, angrily putting her hands back in the pockets of her robes and feeling huffy.

"You do, just in a different way. You like being different, Molly, you want everyone to know that you're not the same and you like to think you're better in a different way. Anyway," Rose said, pushing off from the sink and jumping back to her feet, "Lucy's homework isn't going to away – but, if you want to talk Molly..."

"Okay."

Molly spent a lot longer in the girl's toilets, leaning forwards and clutching her tap so tightly that her fingers were slightly white – looking at her reflection. She was wearing makeup, when only a year ago she'd thought she'd never succumb to Roxy, as she'd been then, and Erin's nagging that she should start to wear mascara and start plucking her eyebrows. Molly wasn't exactly sure when she'd given in, or why she'd given in, or if she'd even made a conscious decision to give in at all. She thought that perhaps it might have just happened.

Molly grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. Honestly? She hated the way she looked back at herself, with her stupid eyebrows and her grimace and her pale spotty skin. She hated the fact that when she got to the end of the day they only thing that had complimented her was her underwear ('_who needs Quidditch with an arse like this!'_) because no one else in the world seemed to have anything good to say about Molly Weasley.

Roxanne was barely talking to her, obsessed with discussing something Molly couldn't possibly understand with Erin. Lucy was, apparently, writing her name with that bloody _ie_ending. Her Dad was sending her endless letters about her homework.

Molly wasn't ready to have sex with anyone. She couldn't imagine getting undressed in front of anyone, was still convinced that she was hideous and was too insecure to actually have a boyfriend. But she was a kid. She was young. She was mature enough that she didn't need everyone else's opinion of her to make her feel like a good person and immature enough that she wanted to perpetuate her snarky, unapproachable, unlikable image.

Lust; one of those untouchable, incomprehensible abstract nouns. She didn't understand, didn't need it, didn't want it. Then again – she was only sixteen.

* * *

><p><em>Hello to anyone reading this! If anyone is. I've just put the final chapter in the queue over on HPFF so I guess I thought I might as well upload this here too. Reviews are greatly appreciated and what not! One more chapter left :)<em>


	4. Fifteen

Molly did not suit being fifteen years old. It felt like it was only last year when the topic of _periods _had been a hot topic, primarily because a thirteen year old Roxanne had yet to experience the disgusting and inconvenient phenomena, and now that was old news and the whole world was focused on things much more difficult to understand than the menstrual cycle – fashion, makeup, being alluring to the opposite sex and being a source of jealousy from fellow females. Frankly, Molly thought talking about periods was a great deal more exciting and less painful than talking about slingbacks VS sandals, or whatever garbage Erin found in _Teen Witch!_

Only last week the surprisingly-somehow-published magazine had published an article about the perfect ratio of attractiveness, leading to all her dorm mates spending an entire evening measuring the distance between their nostrils and jotting down measurements and doing complicated calculations that Molly was sure was made up rather than scientific. As Molly could have told them before they started the whole business, one person was going to end up with the lowest number, would therefore be defined as 'scientifically ugliest' and would be upset – and Erin did get upset when it turned out her face was slightly wonky... before, of course, Roxanne had referred to the rest of article which listed blonde hair and blue eyes as the most attractive features (really? What a surprise!) meaning that it all cancelled out and that Erin was, of course, prettier-than-anyone-else-who'd-ever-lived-on-the-planet-ever-full-stop. The whole affair had been nothing short of farcical and Molly had seriously debated writing a strongly worded letter to the no doubt potion-addled editor of _Teen Witch! _telling her that she was causing shallow, teen idiots to feel sorry for themselves nationwide – and not just because of the criminal use of punctuation in the magazine, but also due to their articles perpetuating the idea of looking perfect and sending all the boys cray-cray.

Molly had spent her entire fifteen years of life steadfastly declaring that she did not care about her appearance (well, she imagined when she was a toddler she'd had more pressing concerns than trying to convince people that she _wasn't_ vain, primarily filling nappies and crying a lot... so, if she was going to be pedantic – which, if Molly was honest, was one of her specialities – she generally meant a good part of the last half-decade). She did not want to appear like one of the types to start hyperventilating over a spot. Nor did she want to embrace the classic teen-tradition of declaring how awful she looked to have her friends rush to a very-artificial defence when they all assured her that she was _just beautiful _and was _so darn pretty _and that they were all _so jealous that it hurt. _

Molly had never pouted at their dorm mirror and told the entire room she was ugly. Not because the thought hadn't crossed her mind, because a large proportion of Molly's brain was regularly occupied in criticising the way she looked, acted, was... but because she was scared that no one would contradict her. There'd be the awkward moment when Erin, who could talk for twenty minutes about how _striking _Roxanne's fairly large nose was, or about how Simrath's admittedly-frizzy hair had _volume_, would turn her mascara-laden eyelashes away... when Roxanne, who regularly deplored how Erin was _skinny in a good way _would be able to produce nothing more than a slightly awkward cough. Instead, Molly's method of attacking her lack of confidence was to scoff at the pair of them whenever they started the regular routine of oh-my-gosh-I-hate-myself oh-no-you're-the-most-beautiful-person-I've-ever-met and pretend, well not quite pretend, that she thought they were all being vain, shallow and childish.

She did think they were vain, shallow and childish. But Molly was also vain, shallow and childish. She was just better at acting condescending rather than embracing it. Molly Weasley had condescending, bitter and scathing down pat.

Erin had once told Roxanne that she thought she was the prettiest girl in the Weasley-Potter family... even _prettier_ than Dom.

Molly had not cried, but it had been a close run thing.

Molly knew she wasn't pretty.

She'd been a ridiculously adorable child but had fallen foul to the awkward pubescent stages of adolescence, and now she looked more ridiculous than anything else. Her body was in a transitory state between pre-puberty and post-puberty, meaning she had much too thin skinny legs, wobbly thighs, more hips than breasts and no self confidence. She'd lost her childlike chubby cheeks, her clear skin and her comfortableness with the way she looked... meaning now inside she was a weeping mess of self-hatred and outside she was still the stubborn why-should-I-care-Molly that had happened at some point after starting Hogwarts, when being the daughter of Percy Weasley had meant that teachers expected her to be a pompous goody two shoes and her classmates had thought she'd be a quiet nerdy-bookworm with no personality.

Of course Molly cared. She often considered that she cared more than Erin and Roxanne, who chatted on endlessly about their low self esteem but still managed to fish for compliments and let them diffuse through their skin until they had happy little smiles as they denied it all; _of course I'm not prettier than you! I'd kill to look like you!_

"What's up, Molly wobbles?" Dexter asked her as she glared into her breakfast. She'd known letting slip that her Grandpa apparently, according to James, called her namesake _Molly Wobbles _as a nickname had been a bad idea – but she also knew that she had a tendency to be slightly more forth coming with information as far as Dexter was concerned, because... Molly may or may not have had a _slight_ liking of Dexter. Not that it was a big deal, because it wasn't. She just liked the fact that Dexter actually knew when Molly was joking and picked on her in a more _jokey _way than a more _mocking _way which meant that her responses didn't have to be quite so vicious, meaning that she actually enjoyed talking to him. Plus he was intelligent. And he wasn't horrible.

Not being horrible, with all the people in Molly's year, was quite the achievement.

"What did your toast every do to you?" Zak asked, kicking her under the table.

Molly ignored that, reluctantly beginning her breakfast and shrugging at Dexter by way of response. Her stomach did a weird jolty thing when he raised his eyebrows at her. So Molly raised her eyebrows in response, before looking back at her toast feeling like a bit of an idiot.

"Where are the others?" Dexter asked.

"Mirror patrol." Molly said, rolling her eyes and feeling her shoulders slope downwards at the mere thought. She'd walked off without telling them, in the end, because she'd been so bloody bored watching them make stupid faces at the mirror whilst attacking their eyes with various contraptions (AKA: eyelash curlers, mascara, eye liner...) until they looked like they were dressed up as something alarming for Halloween. The sad fact was, they probably hadn't notice Molly had walked off.

The recent thing that had been particularly bugging Molly was that Lucy's friends had all decided that they were all _fat _and had set off on the journey of eating healthily which Molly was sure could only end in Anorexia and obsession, neither of which Molly exactly wanted for her little kid sister who was so easily influenced by a bunch of stupid Hufflepuffs. She'd written to her mum about it and had been assured that it was probably just a phase and to write to her again if Lucy did look significantly thinner or if she was still worried and Roxanne had laughed at her and said she was overacting. Yes, she had seen Lucy eating chocolate yesterday so she couldn't be taking the whole thing that seriously, but she'd also seen her and her friends _going for a run_ instead of eating breakfast, and Lucy had muted to her that butter on toast was oh so very fattening. Hence Molly's steadfast glare at her slice of toast.

Apparently, perhaps, if she started eating toast without butter Molly would be an all round better and more attractive person.

(Not that Molly believed that. None of the Weasley family were particularly fat; they all had some crazy ass metabolism which meant that James, Hugo, Al, Louis and Fred could participate in the annual Christmas day eating competition every year without putting on a pound. Well, until the Weasley in question hit about thirty five, because then the expansion outwards was quite impressive. At least, that's what Aunt Hermione had told her).

"You could have waited, Molly." Roxanne said, brushing her hair out of her face with some difficulty because it had become attached to her sticky, obscenely glittery lip gloss.

"I was hungry," Molly returned, "sorry." She added as an afterthought, even though she wasn't.

"So she's been ravenously eating her toast since she got here." Zak said, pointedly nodding to Molly's now cold, untouched breakfast. Molly sent him a glare, which he seemed to find very funny and satisfying. God, what an idiot.

"Ah, well," Roxy said, flipping her hair stupidly, "I've stopped trying to understand Molly."

Right. Roxanne was still annoyed about Molly just walking off and her usual way of expressing this annoyance was joining in with the Molly-Weasley-is-a-joke campaign that prats like Zak were so dedicated too. Even if she was a joke, which was still to be determined, Molly Weasley was not funny. They all needed to back off.

"Morning Dex," Erin said, flashing him an equally glittery smile, "how's it going?"

Erin was having a flirting thing with Dexter. Of course, Dexter just _loved_ it – a nice, pretty girl like Erin sending him flirty glances and lip-gloss smiles? His usual arrogance levels, which had been extreme before, were slowly skyrocketing to hyperspace levels. Erin didn't see it as a big deal, just something that they could squee over when the inevitable topic of _boys _came up, where as Molly was entirely sure that Dexter definitely fancied her. Still, it was what it was and Molly just had to grit her teeth and bare the queasy jealous feeling that she was continuing to pretend didn't exist.

Erin did not know about Molly's... fondness for Dexter. Nor was she ever going to find out.

"Could be a lot worse." Dexter said, smiling in return.

Mornings truly were hateful.

And with a gritty sense of resignation, of giving up to something she'd been resisting for a very long time, Molly made the decision that tomorrow breakfast would be different. Then she picked up her cold, butter-laden toast and finally began to eat.

Molly had been carrying round the tube of mascara like it was some sort of Class A non tradable substance since Rose had delivered it to her with an eye roll and the demand for the appropriate number of galleons (an extortionate amount, although given it was Rose that was probably, depressingly, all down to the price of the mascara rather than her adding a service charge like it might have been if she'd asked one of her other cousins). The pockets of her robes felt slightly heavier than normal with the mascara in her pocket, even though that was ridiculous and stupid on all accounts because, really, the thing wasn't exactly _heavy_.

Mascara was not a big deal. As the foundation she'd borrowed off Lucy wasn't a big deal (although Erin's skin had the tendency towards more spots, hers didn't seem that obvious... whereas Molly always seemed to have one or two, prominent, horrific spots that were just begging to be mocked and stared at... there was nothing wrong with covering it up)... nor the lip gloss (distinctly non-glittery) she'd purchased last Hogsmeade weekend. She was fifteen, so it wasn't like Molly was unfamiliar with the concept of makeup – she'd just been determinedly against the idea of wearing it on a day to day basis. Thanks to the generic female-niece gift she had plenty of quite cheep, quite nasty makeup pallets with a variety of odd eye shadows and lip colours and the sort of colour blusher she thought would look ridiculous on anyone.

It wasn't a big deal. Molly was, yes, prone to exaggeration almost as much as she was prone to sarcasm, but it seemed like the whole makeup issue was symbolic of so much more than a _bit of mascara and some lipstick. _It was like Lucy worrying that butter was fattening: it was nothing to worry about in itself, it's just that embracing that sort of mentality left her sister wide open to a whole host of other things. Molly remembered Dom getting skinner and skinner, and something that had started off as something as innocent as joining her best friend in eating healthy had turned sinister... and even then Dom had been okay, in the end, but it wasn't just switching to diet-butter-beer (which tasted like crap, anyway) or having ultra-shiny lips... it was Molly admitting that she wasn't good enough without makeup anymore.

The changes had been coming for awhile. A few months before Molly's birthday she'd purchased a ridiculously padded bra that made her feel like she actually had a chest, a little while after that she'd started mimicking Erin in the rolling up of her skirt (although, to be fair, not half as much as Erin) and had, several times, tried to do something with her hair. It seemed to Molly that the whole thing was a case of bending or breaking, and she supposed this was her bending. And this mascara was the last extra-volume fake-lashes-effect black-cat-black straw.

Molly had never attempted this mascara thing before. Once or twice she'd been forced into a chair and had been forcibly attacked by various friends or family members, who'd cover her in makeup and perform charms on her hair and say things like _you look so pretty right now _as though Molly wasn't acutely aware of the double edged insult. But, she'd never actually put the stuff on herself. The logistics, obviously, wasn't very complicated... and Molly adopted for holding the mascara wand near her face and trying to blink on it.

She missed. Molly let out an irritated noise and leaned closer to the mirror, trying not to blink as she applied the things on her lashes. Her hand shook, she poked herself in the eye, she shut her eyes very quickly and then began blinking profusely. With one eye streaming and the other half open so she could see what she was doing, Molly reached out for a wad of toilet roll and started trying to mop up the black mess that had become of her face. She'd more or less expected this, but it didn't stop the irritation at herself flaring up a little more. _Molly Weasley, Ravenclaw extraordinaire, can't even put on bloody mascara. _

On the second attempt Molly rather thought she'd done a relatively good job. Her eyelashes did look a little longer. Admittedly she hadn't managed to get hey eyelashes to look like fat spiders legs (the sort they used in potions) like the more popular girls managed, but frankly she didn't think she could be bothered to hold up all that extra weight. She didn't have any eyeliner, so she skipped that, selecting a fairly natural brown shade of eye shadow... bit of a mistake, as it turned out, because she ended up knocking her newly-mascara'd eyelashes with the eye shadow brush and now her eyelashes were splayed out haphazardly as though someone had playing ten pin bowling, badly, with her eyelashes.

When Molly had finally finished arseing abut in front of the mirror she tried to decide whether or not she looked better. These days, the madly-confident Gryffindor girls seemed to have foundation on so thick that Molly would have been able to scrape it off, giving them the smooth, strangely inhumane look of orange porcelain. Molly did not look like that (which she thought was an infinite bonus). She hadn't drawn on her eyebrows either, meaning she'd managed to avoid the permanently surprised look that Roxanne had possessed ever since she'd been a tad overzealous in her eyebrow plucking and had started 'defining' them a little bit further up than was natural. She didn't look as pretty as Erin or Roxanne either, but it was a little better than it had been.

It could be much worse. And, really, giving in was almost a relief – a bittersweet sort of relief that made her half ashamed of herself and half want to yell _it's not a big deal, Molly, just get over it. _

Molly emerged from the bathroom just as the others were waking up, sat down on her bed and began reading her transfiguration text book to pass the time. Admittedly, getting up an extra hour earlier than everyone else had been overkill but Molly hadn't had the slightest clue about how truly incompetent she'd be at this whole makeup lark.

"Molly," Roxanne said, narrowing her eyes as she glanced at Molly in the mirror, when she'd finally gotten to the point in her morning routine where she was applying her own mascara, "are you wearing _makeup_?"

"A bit." Molly shrugged, feeling awkward and idiotic as she concentrated on her textbook.

"I thought you said – " Erin began, only to receive a look from Roxanne and to shut up immediately. Erin had no doubt been about to quote one of Molly's long rants about how pointless and stupid makeup was, citing lines about the sexualisation of children and feminism and Molly thought she'd be grateful for Roxanne for shutting her up as long as she lived – because Molly thought she might still believe all of that, but she wasn't sure either, because she was torn horribly between what the hell she actually thought about the whole thing.

"You look nice," Roxanne said pointedly, "the eye shadow suits you."

"Thanks." Molly said, trying very hard to look like she wasn't slightly pleased that they'd finally noticed her (and trying even more hard not to think _she's only complimenting you because of obligation, Molly)._

"Do you want me to do your hair?" Roxanne asked, turning around to face her with a slightly manic grin.

"No," Molly said, "good God no."

"I could plait it." Roxanne said, tilting her head as she slicked on the stupidly glittery lip gloss.

"I'd look like a Girl Guide." Molly countered.

"What –?"

"Just, no. You're never touching my hair."

"Pigtails?"

"Do I look like an animal? No plaits, not tails, no nothing. I really don't care about my hair, Rox."

"Or your eye makeup," Roxanne said, in a mock quiet voice, "oh no, Molly doesn't care about beauty..."

"I don't understand why it has to be so important, that's all."

"What's there to understand?" Roxanne asked, turning back to the mirror and pouting.

"Is the word not long enough for Miss-dictionary-Weasley?" Erin asked, hand on hip as she 'fluffed up' Molly's hair and grinned at her. This, Molly was to understand, was her punishment for being contradictory and generally a bit of a stick in the mud. It wasn't so hard to take from her friends. She didn't mind, not really.

"What about... stunning, gorgeous... _pulchritudinous_," Roxanne said extravagantly. Molly raised one of her thick, unplucked eyebrows at her. "Fred's got this word of the day calendar," she said, holding out her lip gloss for Molly to take, if she should so wish, "he keeps charming them to stick to the back of my bag – he says I need to expand my vocabulary beyond boys."

"I'll say," Simrath chimed in, taking the lip gloss before Molly had a chance to violently and explicitly refuse the chance to join the crew of idiots who looked liked they'd got diamonds attached to their lips, and trying it herself, "if I hear one more conversation about what a flirt Kyle is..."

"Tell me about it," Molly grumbled, shoving her book into her bag and attempting to flatten her hair after Erin's meddling, "you're worse than Lucy and her obsession with getting blonde highlights."

"Lip gloss?" Erin asked.

Molly sent her a withering look.

Roxanne had been more purposefully embarrassing than normal, with a very pointed doesn't _Molly look nice_ today at breakfast which had caused Molly to perform her finest display of scathing, sarcastic, bitter verbal opponent which she was sure everyone had found much more entertaining than the fact that Molly Weasley had actually donned makeup. The fact that this was considered such a big deal was largely why she'd been so against the change – it seemed like anything Molly did was subject to mockery and general public amusement, where as everyone else seemed to slip under the radar.

Sometimes she thought that she was just paranoid, but after Erin had attempted to cut her own fringe (how hard could it be?) and wound up having to pin the remaining tufts of hair back in a sort of quiff until they'd grown back properly had managed to only receive a bit of flirty-teasing from Callum Bennet – the fifth year Ravenclaw Beater who'd managed to knock out the Ravenclaw seeker during their last match – about bad aim which Molly had found quite funny... assuming, of course, he was being intentionally ironic. If he wasn't then he was a bloody idiot who deserved to be relegated from both the Quidditch Team and Ravenclaw in general. The incident with Roxanne's eyebrows had, admittedly, generated a great deal of inter-family amusement up until the present. Dom, perhaps in poor taste or perhaps in good humour (it was difficult to tell, as far as Dom was concerned) had diagnosed Roxanne's eyebrows as anorexic. Now it was general practice for anyone in their very very extended family to begin conversations, quite seriously, by inquiring after the health of Roxy's eyebrows... but that was _family stuff_ and was to be expected.

Molly got it from all directions. Her cousins tended to be less rigorous in their efforts to ridicule her, mostly because Molly fit in much better with Rose, Fred, James and the like than she did with her own group of friends – they'd always understood and appreciated her sarcasm and divine ability to insult others. Roxanne was more likely to get a bit flustered which was, really, what they were all after anyway. But, she still got her fair share of classic Weasley banter. The main problem was from her classmates, who every so often put the toe over the line between being funny and just being arrogant, bullying shits. And sometimes they threw their gangly bodies right over said line, stripped naked and ran around on the wrong side of that line. In Molly's view, anyway; she very much thought they were purposefully aiming to insult her – _let's see if we can actually make Molly upset, let's see if we can make her lose her temper, dear Merlin, have you seen Molly she's actually wearing makeup?_

Still, Molly was adept enough to diffuse the attention away from her identity crisis resulting in her confiding in a tube of mascara and going against everything she may-or-may-not-believe (because who knew, anymore) meaning that the main brunt of the comments that were sure to come flying at her about making an effort were deflected before they'd been delivered... which was very good, because Molly could not guarantee that had someone said something horrible she wouldn't have burst into hysterical sobs and had to be peeled away from the table at a later date.

Molly had thought that a potions lesson would largely mean that she'd be free for a little longer before it all started but given that her assigned seat in Potions was sandwiched between Zak and Dexter that had been wildly optimistic – the sort of thing even Trelawney wouldn't have predicted.

The potion they were brewing wasn't complicated, not being so very close to the Christmas holidays, which meant that Zak seemed to feel he had some of his attention free to bug her.

"Where d'you get the makeup from?" Zak asked ten minutes into the lesson, poking her with the end of the ladle he should have been using to stir their potion.

"Funny you should ask that," Molly muttered, deliberately chopping up her ingredients feeling distinctly irritated, "the makeup fairies came in the night and left a tube of Gladrag's mascara under my pillow!"

"The makeup fairies probably shouldn't have bothered," Zak returned, "did someone offend you or something? Is that why you've started wearing makeup?"

"The fact that you continue speaking offends me." Molly returned, shifting her seat closer to Dexter – which was a much preferable place to be, anyway – and letting her hair fall between them to try and block out his incessant talking. Merlin, Zak Brady was an annoying prat.

"If I said your hair looked crap, would you start sleeping with your hair in curlers like Tina?"

"You're potion's started steaming, Zak," Dexter said over the conversation, the very picture of disinterested, "you might want to turn down the heat."

Zak swore rather excessively (apparently, the current way to express what a _manly _fourteen year old you were was to know lots of crude and vulgar swearwords... having moved on from being able to eat four burgers last week) and began dithering around his end of the desk looking quite distracted.

"Thanks." Molly said grudgingly, squaring her shoulders against the whole damn world and blinking – not in a fluttery eyelash way, Molly would never be so damn moronic, but in a I'm-not-used-to-wearing-mascara way.

"You shouldn't have bothered," Dexter said, scanning her face with his brown eyes, "really."

"Just," Molly began, flicking through her potions book irritably, "I'm fed up of... not fitting in." In her mind, Dexter was supposed to take this declaration and start offering her some nice, sound, philosophical advice (and maybe a hug?) instead he didn't react at all, offered her a little shrug and returned to his own potion.

Molly wasn't sure why she felt so disappointed. Several of the girls in her class – the other Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs they shared this class with – had said she looked nice and... well, she hadn't exactly been expecting to drown in compliments, but _one _nice thing wouldn't have been too bad. One nice thing from Dexter.

Instead his usual jokey quips had been replaced with the other Dexter, the one who was a bit boring and flat and there wasn't even an element of satire in his earlier comment. Molly thought she did look nicer, not nice by any stretch of the means, but...

"You looked fine before." Dexter finished, giving his potion a dramatic clockwise stir before heading off to the potions cupboard for more ingredients.

Molly found her face flushing slightly and she suddenly forced herself to become very preoccupied with her potion so no one noticed. Apparently she'd looked _fine_ before. No one had phrased it quite like that before... and fine wasn't pretty, but Dexter hadn't been obliged to say anything at all. But it was a _you're okay, really Molly. _She was fine. Molly Weasley was just fine.

Molly silently resolved that next time she wouldn't give in so easily. The slight glow of being complimented meant that Molly knew, realistically, that tomorrow morning... or maybe a few days after that... she'd find herself back in front of the mirror again. She was being internally dramatic again, but not-wearing-makeup seemed to have become a bridge burnt quicker than she'd realised – it felt irreversible, even though that was ridiculous... but the seductive promise of a few off hand comments that validated her as a person was too much.

Molly wasn't a child. She could make decisions herself and... next time, she'd stick to her guns. Beauty – she'd given in, this once. Even if it was something stupid and small like mascara. Molly was determined that for the rest of her life she would neither bend nor break. Then again, she was _only _fifteen.


End file.
